5 Thoughts Towards Making Money Marketing to the Long Tail of Customers

Rob DeRobertis here for the Technology Marketing Center... 5 Thoughts Towards Making Money Marketing to the Long Tail of Customers

Don't know what the Long Tail is?  Check out this Book: The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More

1) Clearly define your channel
Clearly define how "Long Tail" customers are engaged with your channel is critical to manage ROI.  Channel cross talk should be managed.  ie VAR vs Sales Reps vs Direct vs Website.  Define where in the Long Tail you want each channel to participate. Define this based on cost of sales analysis. Understand the overlaps. 

2) Promote through cost effective mediums
Google Adwords are critical but so is a balance with SEO methods of promotion

3) Develop a self sustaining community . 
Feed the community to be successful and allow the community to evolve and be successful.  Don't try to control it, participate in it.

4) Web
Make sure the website is easy to use, provides excellent community support, provides eCommerce capabilities, provides useful information your customer needs to be successful.

5) Free
Consider "Free" or "Freemium" to hook customers with your products.  Making it easy for "Long Tail" customers to get their job done with minimal barriers (ie generating expensive purchase orders for example) will go a long way in becoming a long term supplier.  

Another Chris Anderson Book:Free: The Future of a Radical Price covers this subject nicely.


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